The Internet is used to provide a variety of different forms of communication between users. Two popular forms of communication are: (a) social networking sites, and (b) live voice or video calling using voice and/or video over internet protocol (“VoIP”).
A problem with existing Internet-based communication tools is that different software providers frequently offer independent, incompatible products. For example, a first software provider may offer a VoIP client, which may become very popular with a large number of users communicating with each other via this VoIP client. Similarly, a second software provider may provide a social networking website which may also become popular and gain a large user base. To gain the benefit of both these services, a user must run both the VoIP client and a web-browser separately. Furthermore, conventionally the user must maintain separate contact lists for each of the two services which is a cumbersome and inconvenient arrangement for the user, and also does not maximise the potential user base from the perspective of the communication providers.
There is therefore a need for a technique to address the aforementioned problems with separate internet-based communication tools in order to provide integration and interoperability.
In some existing social networking sites, an instant messaging (IM) client is integrated within the website to allow a user of the social networking site to communicate with the user's social networking site contacts over IM. This only allows the user to communicate with users that are part of the user's social networking contact list.
It is also possible for the user to ‘import contacts’ from a social networking website to an instant messaging or VoIP client. However, in this case the user may only communicate with another user who is already signed up to use the instant messaging service. The user must otherwise invite the other user to sign up to the VoIP or instant messaging service (and the client application may present the first user with a window having controls enabling them to send the invitation by email). Furthermore, when the user selects to import contacts to the client it is necessary for the user to select which contacts he wishes to import. Should the user decide that he wishes to communicate with any other contacts from the social networking site it is necessary for him to perform a further ‘import contacts’ operation.
Furthermore, whilst it is possible to import contacts from one list of contacts to another, other contextual information such as presence information that is relevant to the network from which the contact was imported is lost.